“You’re not less,” he’d say firmly. “You hear me? You’re not less.”
By my teenage years it was clear there would be no miracle cure.
Most of my life happened inside my room.
Tom turned that room into a whole world.
Shelves within reach. A strange tablet stand he welded together in the garage. On my twenty-first birthday he built a planter box by the window and filled it with herbs.
“So you can grow that basil you yell at on cooking shows,” he said.
I burst into tears.
“Jesus, Emily,” he said nervously. “You hate basil?”
“It’s perfect,” I cried.
He turned away awkwardly. “Yeah… well, try not to kill it.”
Then he started getting tired.
At first it was small things—moving slower, sitting halfway up the stairs to catch his breath, burning dinner.
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “Just getting old.”
He was fifty-three.
Mrs. Rodriguez finally cornered him in the driveway.
“You see a doctor,” she ordered. “Don’t be stubborn.”
Between her pressure and my begging, he went.
After the tests, he sat at the kitchen table with papers under his hand.
“What did they say?” I asked.
He stared past me.
“Stage four,” he said quietly. “It’s everywhere.”
“How long?” I whispered.
He shrugged. “They said numbers. I stopped listening.”